(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/6/66/Salt_the_Earth.jpg)
and then water it for a few months, and then you'll come back to find salt plants!
if you take a trip down memory lane and look at the 'popular buys' subsection of councilroom.com, you'll see that governor made for, on average, the fastest games, at 16.99 (rebuild would probably beat it now but you know). salt the earth would also probably be up there. i mean pretty much any kingdom with salt the earth can be worked out to end the game at around turn 6 if both players cooperate, but the fact that it's there should always put things on a timer. what's fun is that this timer can actually be two different things: "hey, you better hurry up with your late-blooming province engine because i can very quickly make it mathematically impossible for you to win" or "hey, you better hurry it up with your alt-vp thing because i can literally end the game on provinces also very quickly." and the fact that this card was released with empires makes the two of these much closer to equally likely, which is nice.
-how good is the fabled 'pure salt strategy'? the absolute earliest you can expect to force the game is really turn 9, and that's with something like open banquet gain cache or something, unless there's something that produces a lot of $8 and 2 buy turns fast but with that you could just buy provinces
-how often does this not target province or colony? take a bite out of your opponent's nobles engine? screw up their rogues by salting duchy?
-should this cause the fastest games? would it have an effect therein without ever being purchased?